


Paper Gears

by Wickueler



Series: The BafEK protocols [1]
Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Explicit Language, Gen, Institutional Racism, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 04:03:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10846092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wickueler/pseuds/Wickueler
Summary: Magic is real and sometimes it becomes a major problem. Peter Grant and Thomas Nightingale have everything under control in London and the surrounding area (well, often) but have you ever wondered how magic is dealt with in other parts of the world? On the ruins of Ettersberg, the German magic community had to be rebuild from scratch, but like with any German government agency, the past casts long and dangerous shadows haunting the present.The BafEK is just your usual minor federal agency supervising its own specialized field of interest. With the minor exception that the BafEK is the only official agency directly assigned to the administration of magical questions and creatures. Some magical creatures, however, have no intention of letting themselves being administrated. And they also would prefer not to be referred to as creatures, thank you very much...





	Paper Gears

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ever published story and also I am (obviously) not a native english speaker (or writer, for that). I have therefore little experience with questions like: would anybody be interested in what I want to express? Or: how do I wrangle the language to keep the 'feeling' of it consistent?
> 
> That said I hope I was able to produce something enjoyable and would be delighted about feedback, especially constructive criticism.

The afternoon of Dr. Erich Köhler had been a bit dull so far, all things considered, which for him being a Beamter, a public official, was just exactly how he liked his afternoons, thank you very much. So when suddenly and with a loud shrieking noise, an outraged women appeared in his office, it is probably understandable why Dr. Köhler met her with some initial amount of consternation. It also didn’t help, that the visitor in question had not used the door, or at least not, as Dr. Köhler liked to think of these things, properly.  
She had not teleported into the office, nor did she glide through the closed door like a ghost would have done. Rather she had moved through it in a swift manorial stride that made it clear to any observer that such mundane a concept as doors did not apply to her, up to the point where the door had no other choice left than to grudgingly agree. Cut abruptly from being tangled in a net of comfortable thoughts involving early clock off and sitting in a beergarden, Dr. Köhler glanced puzzled over the rim of his half-moon-shaped glasses.  
His visitor was definitely female, though if the term women applied, depended probably on the strictness of the applier. She was tall, much taller than Dr. Köhler would have been, had he been standing, wearing a velvet dress in dark green that was covered in flower themed patterns of gold and even darker green and would have made her the star at every renaissance fair. Her long hair matched the ornaments of her dress in its golden shimmer and did not just seem but, Dr. Köhler took a full second to double check, did actually move as if it was floating or caught in a light breeze, which, given that German offices are notoriously devoid of any form of air conditioning, was fairly rude to physics in general. To an unbiased observer, however, the facial features of the shrieking woman would have probably been most intriguing, as they were clearly inhuman. Her eyes were narrow, with an upward inclination of certainly more than 30 degree to both sides of her head. They would have been placed to high up in her head, too, had our unbiased observer applied human beauty standards to her, though that would have meant him being actually a biased observer, maybe. Overall her head was remarkably long and narrow, ending in a pointy chin and having to long, pointy ears attached on either side (of the head, not the chin). As she was still shrieking, it was revealed that not only had she an unusually large number of teeth, but also were those remarkable long, too and certainly sharp as razors. Having finished the thorough examination of his sudden visitor, Dr. Köhler sat himself upright to signal that he was ready to engage in a conversation and waited. After a couple of seconds, he covered his ears with his hands.

It is a well established fact that the German Federal Agency for Multidimensional Cultural Heritage (BafEK - Bundesamt für Extradimensionales Kulturerbe), a subagency of the interior ministry, resides in the city of Hannover, some 200 Km south of Hamburg. It has a modern website properly linked to the ministries web appearance on which you will find, besides a picture and welcome statement from the current head-of-agency, Oberamtsrätin Frau Dr. Helene Schuster-Straubing, a hand full of stories and photos that claim to explain what the agency is doing but, on closer examination, use many words to just not do exactly that. Clever individuals that pass along the agencies main building in Hannover’s University district from time to time point out to their peers that the name of the BafEK seems to be some euphemism, or to be crafted to hide more than to reveal. If they travel with clever peers, those frequently answer that the agency is placed right next to the research center for experimental gravity science and I mean how many experiments on gravity do you think you have to do in the 21st century? I mean you throw things up and eventually they come down again. So forget about silly government naming policies and let’s go have another dozen beers or so. Few people know that the BafEK is the official German agency of choice whenever it is necessary to deal with the inexplicable, the mysterious, the magical.

The female not-exactly-human in Dr. Köhlers office had now been shrieking for almost half a minute straight and the whole thing was beginning to make him feel increasingly awkward. So far, he had been on good terms with his office neighbors but if he was not to come up with an idea on how to silence the being in front of him soon, he certainly would have to buy his own coffee machine. “Would you please tell me your name?” he asked as loud as he could without yelling. It worked like a charm, though Dr. Köhler was definitely sure he had not use one. The being in front of him shut her mouth, glared at him for a moment, the face warped by hate, as far as Dr. Köhler was able to tell from the alien facial features. When she spoke, he was momentarily overwhelmed by an intense vestigia. The smell of old wood rotting in a moor, the feeling of the first snow on unprotected skin, the wind howling in the crowns of trees during a storm, forming a chorus with wolves and darker creatures lurking in the shadows. A sense of sensation for the hunt. Her voice was surprisingly humanlike, although it seemed to have a bit of a hall effect and quite frosty. “You tried to kill my son!” Yes, definitely, that was the frosty voice. Suddenly, Dr. Köhler had to violently suppress the urge to say ‘Hello you-tried-to-kill-my-son, how can I help you?’ Instead he opened a drawer on the right side of his desk, fetched a bottle of Doppelkorn, a tiny drinking glass and an official form and, with a gesture of his left hand, offered the being to sit down on the visitor side of his desk. “Would you then please tell me the name of your son?” he asked in his professional voice, filled the glass with Korn and positioned it carefully on his visitors side of the 70s harplastic desk. He then produced a pen from the breast pocket of his suit jacket and signaled that he was eager to write down her statements in the proper and official way.  
She did not sit down, nor did she stop glaring at him. “Why did you try to kill him?” Dr. Köhler suppressed a sigh that would have been a total rookie move and forcefully remained calm. “You see, this is what I am trying to figure out exactly. If you just give me his name, or yours, for starters, I will be able to look it up.” But the almost-woman just hissed at him “Tell me just one reason little human, why I shall not immediately deroot you!”  
Now Dr. Köhler actually sighed at the blatant threat. If only he’d get a euro for every threat, then he would have already earned like, here the trail of his thought got stuck for a moment, well ok something like 4.50,- Euros this year, but that was beside the point. “Ma’am, please, I would advise strongly against that!”, he said. And then, just to be sure, “This building is prepared with a series of measures, both magical and mechanical, that would any such move from you make it more likely to hurt yourself than me.” ‘Actually the chances of everyone in this room dying, if the shit hits the fan, are clearly the highest.”, he thought. “Please”, he wagged with his paper-form, “Let me help you!”  
And these magical words worked the greatest of all charms again, sucking up another poor soul into the crushing gears of bureaucracy. He saw his visitor’s anger deflating, leaving nothing but a confused, scared almost-women. “I am of the forest people from the hart mountains known to your lot now as Harz.” She said in a bitter voice. ‘Holla, die Waldfee’, Dr. Köhler, who is not half as unassuming a man as he himself thinks he is, thought, almost failing not to grin to himself. “My son was hit by something… something Newtonian. Something bound in metal and symbols as only your lot does it.”, she proceeds.  
“Leibnizian”, Dr. Köhler corrected her automatically. “What?” “Leibnizian. The licensable practice of magic as sanctioned by the ministry and by the BafEK is based on the second volume of ‘Disputatio Metaphysica De Principio Individui’ by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. We do not bother ourselves with the excruciating pseudogibberish produced by old Isaac, except, in some cases, for academic basic research.”  
Seeing that this short excurse confused his guest-fae even further, who now seemingly just began to realize how far out of her forest, and subsequently comfort zone, she had put herself, Dr. Köhler switched topic and began scribbling on his form. “What was the location of this incident?” “He was caught by your trap close to what is known to you as Werningerode castle”, she exclaimed exasperated and he was sure he would have heard her teeth grinding, if she would have been anatomically able to do that. But then he realized something. “Why do you claim that I would have been the one to hurt your child?” he asked. There was a flicker of triumph in her eyes and a new surge of hate seemed to help her refocus on her original plan. “You have been seen”. For a moment he hesitated, but obviously there was no point in denying the existence of something that might just have detached a young elf from his legs. So he settled for a compromise: “There have indeed been BafEK operations carried out in that area. Standard procedures. Nothing more. There were rumors of magical interferences from the demi-monde so the area was given some enhanced protection perimeter. Sure you must have seen the signs we put up.” But she only angrily shook her head. “We do not care for human writings. It is folly” “Well”, he answered with his lips pressed to a thin line “How unfortunate, isn’t it? But if the preparations have been observed, why did your people not avoid the area?” “We learned of it only after my son was hurt and we started investigations.” She sounded bitter “It was the mountain people who saw it, but didn’t care much.” Dwarves! Talking to fae of the Hartz-forest! That made Dr. Köhler raise an eyebrow, because some prejudice does actually contain a grain of truth. He made a mental note of this worrisome development. Divide et impera and all that.  
After another couple of seconds of mutual intense staring, Dr. Köhler fled back into his form. “There may be ways to treat your son. I assume he triggered one of the Elmsfeuer IV magosensoric mines we deployed along the course of the old L65 countryroad. I am quite optimistic we can twist this in a way it is covered by the BafEK’s insurance. Also a colleague of mine might be able to provide direct medical assistance. Can you please describe the nature of the injuries?” But, much to Dr. Köhlers distress, the fairy in his office was not going to follow the proper procedures. Instead she started yelling at him, raising her voice to the point where she was almost approximating her initial shrieking noise.  
“Why do you fucking apes plant these horrible abominations in our forest? How dare you desecrate our sanctuaries with fabrications of murder and metal? We were here before you! We have been walking these woods for a hundred thousand years, weaving songs and magic into symphonies of beauty while you were still sitting in the treetops throwing with your own shit. And now that you walk the same ground as we do you seal it and kill it and tear it apart and STILL DO NOTHING BUT TO THROW SHIT AROUND!”  
Dr. Köhler was now truly afraid that this little interview might end in tears and was about to call the reception for a cold break-off, when a little detail of the angry accusations thrown at him so rudely caught his attention and he realized that he had to press on. “As it happens, we had good reasons to mine this part of the forest.” He started, raising a hand to signal her to stop the damn shrieking.  
“There has been a series of serious incidents. It all started after the construction of the new Autobahn A56 along the path of the former L65 countryroad. Boars attacking people, later attacking cars at full speed. One charged head first into a car doing 200 Km/h. Wiped out a family of five. Our investigation indicated that magic had convinced, maybe forced the animals to become aggressive. And in great numbers.”  
Dr. Köhler did not allow himself to let his eyes slip from the fae, watching her every move. Tears were running from the face of the tall non-human now, falling like little diamonds on her dress. She was mumbling something that sounded like “no right” and “bloody barbarians”. Carefully he opened another drawer under his desk. Hoping she would not realize what he was up to, he kept talking.  
“Herrin,” he said, addressing her with the proper title of a fairy noble for the first time, “Do you know who was responsible for the behavior of the boars?” The fae gave him a contumacious look and hissed more than said “You should not have cut our forest in half!”  
That was not the same as a confession. That was completely worthless. He reached in the drawer and felt his sweaty hand close around the taser. “Herrin, you sure understand that we had to defend ourselves. Why we needed to make sure that the unsanctioned practitioner was stopped.” And then, slowly and purposeful: “Why traps that would maim any practitioner to the point where he would never be able to harm anyone ever again were prepared. By me. Personally.”  
The effect of the words was instantaneous. The fairy restarted shrieking and raised her arms. Dr. Köhler could sense the forma but it was so fast and so alien, so very alien, he had no idea what it was about. Something with thorns, probably. Desperately he raised his shield, trembling in fear that the emergency systems might not kick in in time. But just while the thought passed through his head that he had no idea if he could take on a fairy noble with hundreds of years of practice in ways of magic he had no idea about, the system ignited and a voidpulse threw them both to the ground.  
It hurt like hell and it almost would have smashed his head right on his desk and that would have been the end of the story. The eyesight came back first, after less than five seconds maybe. Thinking was still largely gone and hearing not up for debate but Dr. Köhler realized something in his right hand. The taser. His attacker had not yet recovered. Maybe she got hit worse, as intended by the ermergency system’s constructor, as she was still lying flat on her back, shaking spastically. A single thought fought its way from Dr. Köhler’s brain to his hand, or maybe the other way. Aim and shoot. But when he lifted his arm, the forearm strangely didn’t follow, leaving the joint in a unnatural angle that was definitely not a good sign and rendered any attempt of using the hand hopeless. The taser fell down, as he was not in command of his hand any more. The spasms of the fae seemed to fade out and she began to shake her had as if to fight off the dazzle.  
Dr. Köhler howled in pain and frustration and crawled towards her on his knees. His senses started coming back and he realized that he might lose conscience from the piercing pain all over his body in just a couple of seconds. He tried to concentrate on invoking a forma, any forma, but found that he had forgotten them all. With a last concentration of his remaining will and force, Dr. Köhler leapt himself somehow up in the air for maybe half a meter, just to crash headfirst into the chest of his opponent. He could hear rips brake and felt vomit hit his neck. ‘Fairy vomit’, he thought, ‘doesn’t even sparkle. Fucking Fairies.’ And then the world turned black.  
Sometimes, when you wake up after a night that followed a truly terrible day, before you open your eyes, there is this feeling of hope that past things passed and whatever bad things happened they will not reach over into the glory of a new day. When Dr. Köhler awoke, there was no such luxury. Actually it was the nauseating smell of bodily fluids that pulled him back into his body. Not too much time could have passed, because he was still lying on the fae that so rudely deprived him of a nice summer evening in the beergarden. When he opened his eyes he saw the face of a colleague. Dr. Miriam Schöppenstedt, the only sanctioned practitioner of the BafEK who, although holding a doctoral degree of a scientific field was mandatory for the job, happened to be an actual physician. Much to Dr. Köhlers distress she was currently busy working on the injuries of the fae, having pushed his body hastily somewhat in the direction of her legs to gain access to the badly smashed torso. “I demand this elf to be arrested”, Dr. Köhler managed to declare with squeaky and feeble voice. “Attacking an Amtmann is a major offense. Somebody call the police!”


End file.
